Militia, you say...? Arms Within Easy Reach

Alright, let's talk Militia. Where the Original Intent of the Founders was for citizens to have a gun within easy reach.

By John Longenecker

Today, we are having a debate we should never have. We are squabbling about the force which backs our authority under our system. Can you imagine some people actually rooting for the disarmament of the force which backs their very Citizen Authority in this country?

They root for the disarmament of the people in the name of safe streets. What they fail to realize is that armed citizens make for safe streets, and disarmament makes for unsafe streets – a boondoggle for the industries which thrive on violence. Today, the anti-violence movement is, itself, predatory.

America is unique on the subject of personal weapons and for a reason. We don't have guns for food, we have guns to block tricks and boondoggles where we as armed citizens can handle the violent crime problem better than non-violence policy can handle it. Non-violence policy asks victims to do nothing until we get there. This is called hiding the ball, where politicians and the bureaucrats and industries who support them desire to obfuscate the most effective solution: Citizen authority to act and superior force within easy reach.

Forty states affirm concealed carry and have not regretted it. Some are looking at it, but this affirmation is spotty and meets with forces working to undermine the affirmation. In hiding the citizen authority to act, people die.

In the middle of this is squabbling about who has this monopoly on force. Well, friends, the Militia has that monopoly.

And I can prove it.

When the Supreme Court looks at D.C. v. Heller, they will be looking at a concept called Original Intent. This is their specialty. [I don't like the way the issue is framed in regard to a state militia.] Still, all of the issues they examine are viewed within the framework of what the Founding Fathers wanted, what they defeated, what they wrote as an expression of their intent, and how it is this which is the law of the land, and not current laws which may conflict with this.

At the focus is MILITIA. Alright: let's look at Militia.

What is Militia appears throughout the writings of the Founders who show their work, you might way, on how they arrived at what they finally ratified. This is where you find the proof of what they really wanted for us. If you think Bill Clinton loathed the military, you ought to read how the Founders loathed a standing army as nothing more than a centralization of power, and they weren't going to return to what they had just defeated. Militia in the minds of the Founders – which is Original Intent – never meant Military. It, therefore, by law, cannot mean Military today.

Instead, when they wrote which would be the law of the land in the new nation and forever, was that the Citizen is Supreme Authority. Never again would people be subject to abuses of power. At the time, Militia was every able-bodied person. What we know as the National Guard [ in regard to that at-issue point of state militia] was not even created until 130 years later, so twice we know they didn't mean the Military.

In forming the new nation, the Founders realized that this Supreme Authority of the citizens must be backed by lethal force, and forever, so they wrote it to be absolute and not subject to due proces short of another Amendment. That means rhetoric, gun laws and other devices. In writing the Second Amendment – and the eighth, ninth, tenth and fourteenth which support it – they were not forgetful of guns of the future, they were quite mindful of abuses of power of the future.

The anti-violence movement had best take note that not everyone in government is against personal weapons. Many officials realize that the anti-gun movement is a boondoggle on various levels.

In December, 2004, the United States Department Of Justice published an answer to the U.S. Attorney General's interrogatory on whether 2A was individual or collective. DOJ's answer was that 2A is an individual right, and they showed how and where. Militia is addressed on Page 24 of that document. See http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.pdf

The Founders had just defeated not only abuses of power, but they defeated the army which enforced such abuses. It doesn't pass the test of reasonable expectation that they would write the new law of the land to hand the monopoly on force over to another Army. Army is another issue addressed elsewhere in the Constitution.

Instead, they wrote that the monopoly on force resides in the hands of the citizens, then and always. In delegating some authority to a civilian controlled military, we never gave up any of our own authority.

"The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..."

— James Madison,
Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789

The abuses of power the Founders foresaw live today as this disarmament in the name of safe streets. Boondoggle.

The Founders had their unsafe streets, too, and they wrote that the safest streets will always be where citizens are armed. Yes, the militia. As long as people undestand that militia is the armed citizen and not military, it's good for the country.

John Longenecker is President and CEO of Good For The Country Foundation, a patriotic non-profit organization.